Tiatr of the absurd starring fixers and freeloaders

04 Aug 201806:15am IST

04 Aug 201806:15am IST

And so it ends. A fortnight of promises that turned nightmares. A fortnight of political drama that was actually a mass hoodwink of Goa. A fortnight where all the 40 MLAs that you elected may have taken care of your petty jobs, including changing the zoning of your property or getting you benefits under a welfare scheme, but they half maimed, half killed the idea of Goa. After all, you can always rely on the government to make the right decision, but only after it has exhausted every other conceivable alternative (ES Savas).

On Friday, they (the 40 legislators) drove the final nail in the coffin and unanimously handed over the fate of illegal mining. Yes, illegal because the State of Goa and its elected representatives do not seem to be agreeing with the Supreme Court of India’s recommendation of setting our mining house in order. Karnataka faced a mining shutdown and they brought their lawless mining industry under a legal framework. Orissa even allowed the free market and fair play to open the doors of auctioning of mines to the highest bidders getting the cash-starved State a lot of money. These are States larger than Goa so why does Mining Minister Manohar Parrikar think that Goa is ‘Special’? Is it because the mining mafia sends back the necessary number of MLAs that helps any party form the government or is it because the election funds are provided by the rapists of Goan soil? Did the law-abiding Goans, elect MLAs and Ministers who have scant respect for Supreme Court of India above their greed?

This fortnight in the House shattered the myth of Goem, Goenkar and Goenkarponn. From passage of the controversial TDR amendment that shall ensure that all your paddy fields, your ponds and lakes, your orchards have a value that can help add more floors and storeys on a construction in the cities and towns to acceptance of the fact that Goans were actually being ruled by the ‘in abeyance’ Regional Plan 2021, what we learnt is that we are living a lie where the government doesn’t tell us only sells us. Remember the desperate pleas to help the builders’ lobby made by TCP Minister, a couple of days ago? You mattered to them only till they wanted your votes, do they even care to ask you now? The people who preached the idea of Goem now want it to be completely sold out to the hands of real estate builders and converting every Goan youth into an agent of a piece of Goa.

The Revenue/Employment Minister, in his swashbuckling corporate avatar, may be soliciting start-ups from Goa and everywhere but his 100 per cent employment for Goans rant is as farcical as his jokes covering clandestine usurpation of agriculture land or self-serving tampering with Alvara land owners fate. Just like the Minister’s allies at the Centre want well read Indians to become pakoda sellers and beggars, probably brokerage would be his idea of 100 per cent employment for Goans.

And oh, not to be forgotten the tiatr played out between Congress and a feigningly disturbed CM on the formalin issue was eyewash. The whistleblower FDA official was moved away from public scrutiny, the fish mafia boss who seems to be all over Facebook posing with all GFP and BJP biggies was left untouched because crime is the new normal for these proponents of Goenkarponn. If you had any pretence of governance for the past 17 months, forget it. Is then Goa ruled by a grouping brought together by common greed and common disrespect for law, leaving Goans thinking whether the law-abiding citizen did really elect these lawmakers?